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The Histories |
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The Histories of the Stevens—Croot Family Heritage |
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Elizabeth Pearce was born in the naval dockyard town of Chatham, Kent, 30 miles ESE of London in 1841. (Charles Dickens had spent his happier childhood years there some 20 years earlier.) Elizabeth’s father was Thomas Pearce, a stonemason; we know nothing of the rest of her family, except that two brothers followed her to New Zealand, one of them founding the sporting goods firm George Pearce Ltd that traded prior to 1992 at 351 George Street, Dunedin, (near Terry’s Bookshop). |
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Elizabeth Pearce (1841—1945) |
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Elizabeth had a disastrous beginning to her life in New Zealand. She had emigrated as a maidservant to the family of Dr. T. J. Campbell, who was coming to take up his appointment as first rector of Otago Boys High School. After the ‘Matoaka’ arrived at Port Chalmers (4 July 1863), a large welcoming party arrived to greet the Campbells and escort them up to Dunedin in style aboard the steam ferry ‘Pride of the Yarra’ on July 6th. The other two family servants were included in the party, but Elizabeth, presumably the humblest of them in station, was given the task of accompanying the family’s luggage and furniture to town on the bumping bullock-dray. She probably thought she was being extremely hard done by, until the dreadful news reached her that the ‘Pride of the Yarra’ had collided with another small steam vessel, the ‘Favourite’, off Blanket Bay, and all the Campbells, their two servants and several other people had been drowned. Dunedin was thrown into mourning for several days, and Elizabeth Pearce was left with no job, no family and very grim prospects in a new, strange land. We don’t know what she did next or what employment she obtained over the next year and more, though as Dunedin was now a booming gold-rush town, domestic and retail work would not have been hard to find. We may presume that Elizabeth Pearce knew Elizabeth Bradley (see next panel), one of the more than 40 young single women on board the Matoaka as assisted immigrants, and that that acquaintance led to her meeting Henry Shacklock and his friend Charles Croot. At all events, Charles and Elizabeth were married in 1865, and shortly afterward settled into the newly-built house at what became 30 Grosvenor Street, Kensington. |
A Disastrous Beginning |
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Henry Ely Shacklock, was an iron moulder who had served his apprenticeship in various foundries in Nottingham and Derby. He settled on an adjoining section to the Croot property (in Grosvenor Street) in Park Terrace, a street that has now been swallowed up by the Southern Motorway as it skirts the Oval. Before he had left Nottinghamshire, Henry Shacklock had become engaged to Elizabeth Bradley, who followed him to New Zealand on the Matoaka the following year. Also on board this ship, when it berthed at Port Chalmers on 4 July 1863, was the future Mrs Charles George Croot—Elizabeth Pearce. When Henry Shacklock set up his foundry in Princes Street in January 1872, Charles Croot lent him a substantial sum of money by taking out a mortgage over his land. The Croots have always believed that Shacklock offered Charles George a partnership but that he turned it down… a decision his descendants have always found somewhat difficult to forgive. Shacklock was able to discharge the mortgage in two years, and went on to amass a considerable fortune as the designer and manufacturer of New Zealand’s most popular coal range. For more in Henry Ely Shacklock go to: |
The Shacklock Connection |
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Reproduced with permission from |
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A cast iron colonial oven |
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Copyright © Lesley Catterall 2006. All rights reserved. This is a free website and no part of it can be reproduced or sold without the prior permission of the editor. |
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Pride of the Yarra 1863, (Source: NZ Wrecks) |
